The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security joined the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to conduct another pandemic tabletop exercise in Brussels, Belgium, on October 23, 2022. When a similar exercise had taken place in the past it was followed by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and indiscriminate lockdowns.

Remarkably, the coronavirus process looked like tabletop exercises (Event 201, 2019). They predicted an enterovirus originating in Brazil and dealt with lockdowns, masking, vaccine passports, and social distancing.

The 2022 exercises were dubbed Catastrophic Contagion. “The extraordinary group of participants consisted of 10 current and former Health Ministers and senior public health officials from Senegal, Rwanda, Nigeria, Angola, Liberia, Singapore, India, and Germany, as well as Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,” The Center for Health Security, reports.

The participants simulated a reaction to the next pandemic with various exercises.

“Participants grappled with how to respond to an epidemic located in one part of the world that then spread rapidly, becoming a pandemic with a higher fatality rate than COVID-19 and disproportionately affecting children and young people.”

According to the participants, the lessons learned include more social engineering:
“Leaders must prepare now to make difficult, critically important decisions with limited information in the early days of the next pandemic in order to increase the chances that a dangerous outbreak can be contained at the source. In the early days of a major new contagious disease epidemic, there could be a brief window of opportunity to stop it from becoming a pandemic. To successfully contain such an outbreak, decisive and bold action would need to be taken in the face of incomplete data, high scientific uncertainty, and potential political resistance. Thinking through such challenges, preparing in advance to react effectively, and practicing through both high-level tabletop and operational exercises should start now.

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“It may seem like all these critical policy decisions have been resolved during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they have not…

“…These are not purely public health and scientific decisions; they will be made by leaders in the context of political, economic, and social realities that can be anticipated and considered in advance.”

On the site: “Countries should establish a global network of professional public health leaders who can work together to improve epidemic preparedness and response and strive for consensus on scientific issues in advance of the next major outbreak.”

feature image credit screenshot from centerforhealthsecurity